


(15. Legend) / The Cryptids of Soho

by Mothfluff



Series: GO-ctober Prompts 2019 [15]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Dinner conversations, Gen, Legends, M/M, October Prompt Challenge, One Word Prompts, local cryptids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 18:29:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21081113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mothfluff/pseuds/Mothfluff
Summary: My attempts at an October Challenge, basically using the original Inktober prompts for drabbles.(Each prompt will be posted as part of a series, not chapters, so I can add tags/characters/ratings/trigger warnings for each instead of the whole she-bang)Prompt 15 - Legend“Aha!” Crowley hollers, and the finger keeps pointing. “I might be in medieval legends, angel, but at least I didn't brand my liminal space with my own goddamn name! At least I don't go around in a century old costume to have people gossip about me being some kind of ghost shopkeep!”“At least my legends are nice stories.” Aziraphale tries to counter. It doesn't do much, as Crowley is already laughing with absolute victory as he falls back on the couch.Anathema leans over to Newt to place a kiss on his cheek – he is pretty unaware what for, but he enjoys it nonetheless.The evening's entertainment has been sorted.





	(15. Legend) / The Cryptids of Soho

**Author's Note:**

> a bit shorter than usual, and maybe rushed :/ writing has been getting very difficult for me the past few days, but I don't want to lag behind even more days than I already am. Sorry, hope you still enjoy it (I at least really liked the premise)

“You know, there's a story in my Mami's hometown.” Anathema sounds absent-minded, which is rare, but more understandable once you notice the empty glass of wine in her hand. “Been passed down for generations.”  
“How utterly fascinating.” Crowley mocks, but Aziraphale's tut stops him. The evening had been so nice, and they'd gotten to such a quiet, comfortable state back in his shop, he really doesn't need the demon to break it all with a few sharp comments.

“Do go on, dear.”

“S'just a story, about... this giant snake living in the woods nearby. Eating young girls. She told me to keep me from running off to far, I think.”

“Again: how fascinating.”

“Made me think of you. You know.”

“Listen, not every giant snake story from somewhere in the jungle has to do something with me-”

“There _are_ a lot of them, though.” Anathema grins as Aziraphale refills her wine, sharing the wicked gleam in her eye. Their regular meet-ups have done nothing but help the inner bastard of the angel come out to play, especially with Crowley. He's not quite sure he likes it.

“I couldn't even have _been_ in all of the places people claim to have seen snakes or demons.”

“Stories like that travel, though.” Newt, up until now the quietest of the dinner quartet, speaks up in an almost rambling voice, staring at his half-empty glass (it doesn't take much for him, Anathema has learned quickly. It took much longer to convince Aziraphale not to constantly be a good host and refill his glass. She's not yet gotten it through to Crowley, who's already topping him off, no matter how much she stares him down.) “Especially in older times, like, pre-media. Word of mouth, and fear of monsters, and such. Maybe you just showed up in a few places and then they told all the neighbours.”

“Maybe dragons is your fault, too.” Anathema throws in, grinning, thinking back to their last discussion.

Crowley opens his mouth once, twice. He wants to protest, but neither of the humans are in a state to give him a proper fight instead of continuing the taunt, he decides (or convinces himself). He shrugs and throws himself back on the couch next to them.

“Yeah, yeah, sure, alright. It was all me. Every bad evil monster in fairytales, every devil legend, all me. Happy?”

Anathema giggles quite happily, but Newt's face turns into one of regret – he might not be sober anymore, but he's definitely clear enough to realise that maybe, making an actual demon angry was not a very wise after-dinner partytrick (one which Anathema had perfected by now).

“Sorry, I didn't mean to accuse- I mean-” he stammers, but Crowley waves him off.

“Whatever. Probably would've gotten me more commendations from Downstairs if it was all true.”

“Oh, I'm not sure about that.” Aziraphale interrupts and earns the surprised stare of all three of them, even as glass-eyed as they are by now. “Do you really think Hell would've been happy with you being constantly discovered? We were supposed to lay low, after all.”

“Oh, really?” Crowley hisses, and Newt, who hasn't spent as much time with them as Anathema has – hasn't seen this dance and play as often as she – shrinks down in his seat. “_Oh, really_? You gonna tell me how to do my job, angel? Gonna say I fucked that up, too?”

“I didn't say that.” Aziraphale wipes non-existent crumbs off his waistcoat. “Especially not with that wording, thank you very much. All I'm saying is”, and that bastardly gleam is back, as Anathema tries to stiffle her giggle and Newt's eyes worryingly dart back and forth between them, “that there are rather a lot of times where even I heard about your workings from locals before I found you.”

Crowley is silent again for a minute – not, like with the humans, because he knows there won't be a fair fight – rather exactly because he knows he will lose.

Unless he turns.

“Assss if”, he hisses yet again, and Newt sinks a little lower, “as if you weren't just as bad!”

“Well, I wasn't.”

“Oh please!”

“I was always a bit more careful than you, dearest.”

“Oh yeah, absolutely, no legends about miracles or angel sightings or helpful glowing strangers anywhere-”

“But you can't pin them on me.” Aziraphale's face is triumphant, his smile a tad too bright. “I could name several angels who've come down for messages. And miracles aren't exactly connected to a person, are they? Not like a snake-shaped monster or, say, a handsome lurker with slit pupils.”

Crowley sputters, his mouth faster than his brain, which is not able to come up with any comebacks. He blames the wine, inwardly. (He's only had half a bottle. If he blamed it outwardly, Aziraphale would set him straight once again, knowing just how much the demon can handle before becoming unbearable.)

The silence hangs over them, a string pulled taught, waiting to snap and either make or break the evening. Anathema loves the suspense. Newt is terrified by the tension.

“There is a story my dad told me.” He breaks the silence, and earns three stares at himself now. Anathema expected a lot, but not for her boyfriend to start off the penultimate argument of the evening. (She feels quite proud.) “About a local Soho cryptid.”

“A Soho cryptid.” Crowley echoes, his eyes darting to Aziraphale, who is very uncomfortably trying not to look at him. A grin grows on the edge of his mouth.

“Yes.” Newt is either too inebriated to notice what he is doing, or too spurned on by the sudden rush of adrenaline of daring to talk. “He's told me when I moved to London, about this shop that's been open for like two hundred years. Which isn't much in London, I guess. But also about how the clerk never seems to change.”

Crowley's grin grows unbearable. Anathema is stifling her giggles again.

“Told me how he visited the place once and there was a picture on the wall of the opening on, like, 18-something, and it was the same dude standing behind the counter.”

Crowley barks out a laugh. He remembers that picture. He can see it before his inner eye, clearly – mostly because it's now hanging in the small flat upstairs, after a customer had made a comment that left Aziraphale stammering and sputtering to find an excuse.

“I thought my dad was just having me on, you know, wanting to scare me when I moved to a bigger city, but then-” Newt takes a sip of the wine, some liquid courage, “I went to some shops around the area, and they all said the same, or something similar. Or they had a story about the same person helping them and their great-grandpa. Or about the strange- ...the going-ons in the bookshop on the corner. There was a lady who called it a liminal space, but back then I didn't know what that was, so I thought she was just a bit crazy.” He throws an apologetic look to Anathema, who's not even noticed the implied insult, far too busy with both being proud of him and excitedly watching Crowley rise (quite shakily) from his spot on the couch and point an accusing finger at Aziraphale, who has sunk down in his armchair almost as much as Newt on the sofa.

“Aha!” Crowley hollers, and the finger keeps pointing. “I might be in medieval legends, angel, but at least I didn't _brand _my _liminal space_ with my own goddamn name! At least I don't go around in a century old costume to have people gossip about me being some kind of ghost shopkeep!”

“At least _my_ legends are nice stories.” Aziraphale tries to counter. It doesn't do much, as Crowley is already laughing with absolute victory as he falls back on the couch.

Anathema leans over to Newt to place a kiss on his cheek – he is pretty unaware what for, but he enjoys it nonetheless.

The evening's entertainment has been sorted.

(Crowley will not let it rest with the evening, though. The following weeks, not a day goes by during which Aziraphale doesn't hear a new story about himself the demon's found out from local residents. Crowley will recite them with utter glee, about how the bakery on the corner has kept to a certain recipe for generations now only because they fear it will anger whatever-Aziraphale-is-in-their-minds if they change it, how the old lady living in number 86 down the street remembers him being ever so helpful when her mother moved in as a shunned single mother 80 years ago, how he hasn't aged a day since he showed up in that ancient newspaper clipping about peculiar shops of the area.)

(He stops one day, Aziraphale notices, and it takes quite a lot of pushing and prodding to find out why – how the stories soon switched to the equally puzzling car parked outside the shops for decades now. To the string of handsome, well-dressed, stylish gentlemen that the Soho cryptid seemed to entertain – a cryptid with a type, they all agreed, a certain taste for red hair and good cheekbones and far too long limbs.)

(The argument is at an impassé. They decide to lay it to rest. Aziraphale, as a last act of bastard-ness, hangs up an old daguerrotype of the two of them next to the shop's till. Anathema spots it on her next visit and breaks down in a fight of laughter.)


End file.
